From what I've read of Caitlin Flanagan, it's very possible that I'd agree with the author.

But in her criticism of Flanagan, she feels her case is made by merely quoting this passage from Flanagan's piece in the NY Times Style section:

"A man can sit in, watching television with newspapers scattered everywhere and food all over, and they just don't care...We women have the sense that someone's watching us. We need those newspapers picked up because what would people think?"

Earth to Rebecca: The different male and female attitudes toward neatness that Flanagan describes are overwhelmingly typical. Please note that Flanagan is describing life as it is, not as it should be. There's a big difference.

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Am I finally grasping what everyone else knew all along -- that in Broadsheet, describing reality that differs from how it "ought to be" automatically means the describer is advocating that reality?

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Hey, Broadsheet, you want to really make a difference?

Then criticize Cosmopolitan magazine. 'Cause this is the top-selling magazine for single women, with a circulation of about 3 million. And almost every word in it encourages women to think constantly about their appearance, and to be subservient and manipulative -- whatever it takes to get their man.

Cosmopolitan is not merely *describing*, but strongly advocating, a lifestyle that is the diametrical opposite of liberated. (True, when Helen Gurley Brown became editor-in-chief in 1965, her influence led the magazine to advocate what was then very liberated behavior.) If you haven't picked it up for a while, you might want to take a look at it and tear it to shreds in your writing, instead of complaining about those who merely *describe* an unliberated reality.

This article claims that the "boy crisis" has been "debunked". Here is the "reasoning" by Ms. Traister, who describes a Washington Post article

by Caryl Rivers and Rosalind Barnett:

Rivers and Barnett begin by noting that in the early 20th century, "monthly magazines, ladies' journals and books [published] urgent polemics ... warning that young men were spending too much time in school with female teachers and that the constant interaction with women was robbing them of their manhood." Sound familiar? "What boys needed, the experts said, was time outdoors, rubbing elbows with one another and learning from male role models. That's what led -- at least in part -- to the founding of the Boy Scouts in 1910."

"Obsessing about a boy crisis or thinking that American teachers are waging a war on boys won't help kids," write Rivers and Barnett. "What will is recognizing that students are individuals, with many different skills and abilities. And that goes for both girls and boys."

This certainly is a usage of "debunked" that I have never encountered before: to express a contrary opinion.

By bringing up what may have happened in 1910, and by labeling the recent concern over boys' pre-college education as "a war on teachers", Rivers and Barnett are setting up "straw men" to knock down: i.e., rebutting things that no one is saying. This adds heat, but not light, to the discussion. And one thing they are distinctly NOT doing is debunking anything.

Unlike Ms. Traister and her self-styled omniscience, I don't know whether there really is significant cause for concern about pre-college education for boys. I do know that college enrolment statistics showing that freshmen are 57% female and 43% male is enough to warrant further investigation.

Clearly, the First Law of Robotic Feminism is

1. Society should assist women with their problems, but must never even consider assisting men with theirs.

I would heartily concur that the condom lockdown is merely a plot against the poor if only there were at minimum a scintilla of evidence.

But nooooooooooooooo, that would be asking too much of these journalist wannabes.

Not that I don't share a feeling of frustration anyone's access to something as important as condoms is hampered. Yet I do not automatically accuse the stores locking up the condoms of doing so "under the guise of theft prevention".

The only mention in the article that could remotely be interpreted as evidence for this presumption is this pargraph:

But Heather Boonstra, a policy analyst for the Alan Guttmacher Institute, a think tank that focuses on sexual health, is skeptical of the theft rationale. She tells the Post, "It's an economic thing. It goes back to prejudice and fear. In those areas of the city that are poor, stores fear that people are going to steal the product -- whether they do or not."

This explanation fails to pass the smell test. There are thousands of different products for sale on the shelves of a big pharmacy. Why would CVS et al. go to the trouble of locking condoms down and reducing sales if they didn't have a reason to benefit from it? (Trust me on this: large corporations care about very little other than the bottom line, unless coerced.) Not that I have any special fondness for large drug chains.

As mentioned in this Salon article, young teens are often embarrassed to make any purchase connected with sex in any way. In my experience, a common remedy for this embarrassment is to shoplift such articles.

So the intelligent thing to do is to recognize that no one is plotting against the poor; what we have is a problem to solve: How can stores avoid theft of condoms without deterring sales? There are many potential solutions to this problem without invoking paranoid conspiracy theories.